https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/453741-dozens-of-catholics-arrested-at-capitol-after-protesting-trump
Dozens of Catholics arrested at Capitol after protesting Trump
immigration policies
THE
HILL
BY
REBECCA KLAR - 07/18/19 01:35 PM EDT
·
A group
of Catholics, wearing photos of migrant children who died in U.S. custody, was
arrested Thursday as they protested the Trump administration’s immigration
policy.
Francisan
Action Network, a Catholic human rights group, planned the protest calling the border
facility conditions a human rights violation and "contrary to religious
teachings."
Photos
shared by the religious groups show hundreds of participants demonstrated
inside the Russell Senate Office Building.
"Images
of children kept in deplorable and unsanitary conditions, without access to
showers for weeks, and sleeping on concrete floors without blankets, and being
detained incommunicado have compelled us to stand in solidarity and say, 'not
in our name!'" said Sister Áine O’Connor, a protestor arrested Thursday,
in a statement.
U.S.
Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki said 70 individuals were arrested for “unlawfully
demonstrating in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building.”
"Scripture
reminds us that the Holy Family were once migrants who had to flee their
country, and so our faith compels us to be people of compassion and mercy who
welcome the strangers in our midst. We are at a pivotal moment of history that
demands a faithful and moral response to stop this inhumanity once and for
all," O'Connor said.
Sisters
of Mercy, one of the protest's participating groups, tweeted video footage of
the arrests showing four protesters lying on the ground in the center of the
Senate building, surrounded by hundreds more bearing the faces of migrant
children who died in U.S. custody.
Ahead of
Thursday’s demonstration, Franciscan Action Network executive director Patrick
Carolan told America magazine the group was “horrified
at the treatment of children at the border.”
“We’ve
been talking and decided that we had to do something,” he told the outlet. “We
are trying to get Catholics across the country to rise up and reclaim our
faith.”
Earlier
in the week, the Jewish organization Never Again Action protested U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement's D.C. headquarters following weeks of nationwide
protests at detention centers.
Democrats have called out the
reported unsafe and unsanitary conditions, but Republicans and border officials
deny that migrants are being treated inhumanely.
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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